Announcing a new witness voting proxy fund worth Millions - Nominate Free Speech Witnesses!
It's been a while since I made a Witness Update for Hive. In part that's because I had to go to Australia for 9 months to help a friend survive a very difficult time and in part it's because I have been so busy working on so many different things.
Recently, as you may be aware, I have experienced continual zeroing or near zeroing of all of my posts on Hive by Curangel, OCD, their downvote trail and others. This would have significantly impacted my ability to make time for Hive and for researching key health topics. However, since I value Hive as a free speech platform I have been making as much time as possible available to dedicate to Hive behind the scenes - which I have mainly been dedicating to examining and overcoming the centralisation of stake that has occurred here in terms of the balance of upvotes and downvotes (My last post addresses this issue and I also spoke on the 3Speak Community show on this recently too).
While some people think that the ability for a small number of people to nuke Hive accounts into the ground unchallenged (even successful accounts with lots of followers who are active) is not a problem, the reality is that I have long seen this as one of the biggest threats to Hive. I have had many people come to me behind the scenes over the years to complain about this, but there hasn't been much I could do. Hive is powered by stake primarily, so whoever has the most money calls the shots - and I have not had the most money.
The recent threats made to people on Hive by certain large stakeholders, both in terms of threats to curation rewards of other large stakeholders and even in terms of physical threats of violence made to people on chain, has motivated other large stakeholders to take action. The full details of this action are not public yet, however, I can announce that I have been proxied over $1.7M worth of witness voting power as part of the response.
Hive only exists because of a centralised attack on Steem by Justin Sun who sought to censor the chain. Everyone needs to prioritise preventing behaviour of this kind on Hive and I am saddened that the amount of effort which went into creating Hive is not sufficient motive for some around here to continue to uphold that vision. It may be that the perceptions of some here are simply not allowing them to see the similarity between Justin Sun and some of what is happening on Hive to limit the free flow of information.
Proxy Your Witness Votes For Free Speech
This proxy of voting power has been made in order to tip the balance of the governance of Hive towards free speech and away from downvoters who fail to understand basic human relations or who are, perhaps, even motivated by nefarious intentions. It has already been used to this effect and has created real change to Hive governance.
This post is an invitation to everyone to consider proxying your witness voting power to me in order to continue the mission of ensuring that the top 20 witness positions on Hive are populated only by those who demonstrate the ability to respect the free flow of information, human decency and open mindedness (all of which are shared goals of so many of us who make up the Hive community).
Currently, I am not using all of my 30 witness votes (You can see who I am voting for here). This is because I am not familiar enough with all of the witnesses and their true motives and have not yet found 30 that I fully trust. I do pay close attention to the statements made by people and have done over the 5+ years on Hive/Steem - but the majority of witnesses that I have heard speak seem to undervalue free speech or take no action to protect it, hence - again - why I do not have 30 votes yet cast.
So this post is both an invite to proxy to me and also an invite to inform me of witnesses that I am not currently voting for, who are a good fit for the goals I am stating here. If you are a witness who is strongly for free speech on Hive, then please leave me a comment below that demonstrates that this is the case. Also, if you want to nominate someone else then please do, but I won't be voting for anyone who cannot provide any evidence that they are aligned towards free speech.
Some Examples of Who I Am Voting For And Why
@Ausbitbank - One of the longest active witnesses. I have known him since the beginning on Steem and he is the one who is most responsible for me blogging on Hive today. He consistently upvoted my posts over the years that exposed numerous serious crimes and problems in society, many of which continue til this day. Many in society take 5-10 years to catch up with accepting what I expose. Some take 1 year. Ausbitbank is right there with me, with no delay!
@Steempeak - Creators of @peakd, still the best general use Hive front end, as far as I am concerned. I am not aware of any action they have taken that is anti free speech. PeakD could definitely do with being optimised in order to prioritise posts in ways that aren't so easily manipulated by large stakeholders and it is possible that 3speak will take their crown in the near future. For now, they are adding a lot to Hive and deserve support.
@yabapmatt - Developer and Founder of Splinterlands. Open minded, seemingly fair, creative and supporter of exposing important topics via Hive. I have never seen him say or do anything that is against free speech.
@stoodkev - Developer of Hive Keychain, a fundamental tool for Hive. Again, like Matt, I have never seen him do or say anything that is against the interests of Hive.
@quochoy - Developer at Hive.blog - actively helping Hive. I have never seen him take action that harms Hive or that messes with free speech.
@someguy123 - Owner of Privex, hosting company, and maintainer of Hive deployment packages that keep everything running (among other things). He tirelessly helps Hive and to my knowledge has never said/done things to harm free speech or growth here.
@aggroed - The other founder of Splinterlands and also Palnet and more. He has a shared interest with me on free speech and specifically exposing the important issues of the day that the mainstream and their allies seek to bury at all cost.
@threespeak - @starkerz and @theycallmedan are strongly focused on free speech and putting huge amounts of time into improving Hive, both as a free speech platform and as a successful financial investment.
@drakos - Ex top 20 witness for Hive. Outspoken advocate for free speech.
@timcliff - I have known Tim since the beginning of Steem. While I haven't seen him being so active lately on Hive, he generally is able to make neutral and reliable decisions for Hive governance, without letting politics or agenda get in the way.
@bobinson - Developer at 3Speak (amongst other projects), so aligns with the free speech intent there.
@apshamilton - Lawyer who runs the class action lawsuit against Facebook/Google on behalf of the Hive community. He consistently pushes for free speech on Hive.
@r0nd0n - Another long time Hive/Steem member. He helps run the MSPWaves and Minnowpond organisations (PAL) and hosts regular chat shows for the Hive community. He demonstrates good knowledge of the key factors on Hive, spanning technical through to social and political. r0n is a big supporter of free speech and open debate, as evidenced by him running the @freezepeach counter downvoting service.
@liondani - Another long time Steem/Hive witness. Haven't seen much from him lately, but he has shown support for freedom in the past enough for me to vote him.
@disregardfiat - Free speech advocate and creator of D.lux, which aims to help lower access to Layer 2 communities on Hive.
@ura-soul - Me! I have worked for nearly 2 decades to help heal, balance and evolve Earth. This specifically requires unconditional respect of free will, which means full free speech and doing whatever is needed to ensure no-one is being overpowered. Currently developing a site for Hive that can help overcome the ideological downvoting situation and also looking at launching Layer 2 communities that will provide free speech spaces too.
How To Proxy Your Witness Vote
I am asking you to re-evaluate your current witness votes on Hive to make sure that you are voting for people who you KNOW are aligned towards free speech and that means the wise and non abusive use of downvotes/upvotes.
One way to do that is to proxy your witness votes to me and to let me take care of the research and maintaining the voting list. To proxy your votes to me, just use the button to do so in the 'interactions' menu in PeakD when viewing my profile or go to the witness voting page at Hive.blog - then scroll to the bottom and add my name into the 'set proxy' box and click the button.
- Make sure you are logged in at Hive.blog and go to the witnesses page.
- Enter 'ura-soul' into the 'set proxy' box at the bottom of the page.
- Click 'Set Proxy'. You are done.
From then on, you will automatically use your Hive stake to vote for the witnesses that I vote for. Your Hive Power will not be used for anything as a result, except for voting for witnesses. This action does not give me any ability to upvote or downvote posts on your behalf or anything like that.
Again, if you have any comments on my choice of witnesses or want to make suggestions for others for me to consider then please leave a brief comment below stating your case.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Read My User Guide for Hive Here
You Can Vote For Me As A Hive Witness!
Click the big black button below:
View My Witness Application Here
View Some of My Witness Related Posts
Note: Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Hive Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Hive blockchain or DApps such as PeakD and 3Speak... You can really help Hive by making your witness votes count!
Great post and great work keeping up the fight for free speech.
I want Hive to be a place where downvotes are for spam, plagarism and poor quality posts but not for legitimate differences of political opinion.
Thanks and absolutely, I agree. Downvotes have a place but it is not to stifle debate!
@ura-soul I liked your post, will follow you and asap I'll proxy my vote or approve yr witness. (I'm only with posting key at this device)
Good job keeping hive a Free speech platform.
I'm following steem since 2017, and now I'm understanding better the proposals and witness role on the network.
What happened with steem was prof that we need to check closer this part of the system. Centralized power is not a good idea.
And the Hive fork was the best think that happened and i followed it. Still have my steem account but Hive become my favorite.
Free speech vs downvote: IMHO is totally different. I dont agree with a lot of posts but don't down vote it. It's not a "dislike". I just don't upvote it.
I use downvote for bad content such as violence, plagiarism or when i realize that is not a original content. And sometimes i think that i should use it more often. 😆
Thankyou! Yes, we agree on all points I think. :)
Voted!!!
A reason why I vote for you as witness. Amongst others. Thanks for being you.
Amen brother.
and personal bullying just because someone with a lot of stake doesn't like someone.
I have $10,000 USDT for the first witness to blacklist azircon and curangel. Just those 2 accounts to make a point to the others who are just beta followers and will likely cut their loyalty as soon as they are not able to be downvote by the same sociopaths.
That money will not be available for ever either, I have netter things to do with my life than piss in the wind on Hive...
You're seriously trying to bribe a witness to censor accounts on a post about free speech ?
I think he thinks this is Steem.
To censor cyber stalkers who are using their funds to commit crimes against people like @frot when he is walking his dog. Have you see nthe threats?
When i almost zeroed az, curangel was there to upvoting him, making sure the sociopath who is threatening frot is making money.
if we do not remove them, we are encouraging cyber stalking and internet crime. I personally...
DO NOT FORGIVE.
DO NOT FORGET.
EXPECT ME. ZERO HP in HAND now.
Shows his integrity.
Yeah, it really does. Pathetic!
At least offer 20k...
I have people who will double me, but they think no one cares so wont even come to offer. Maybe the person who is being stalked by the azircon will have something to say because I personally witnessed them invest over $20k into blurt... so i am assume there is alot more to go around.
That joke flew over your head eh?
Do you guys get paid to advertise for Blurt? I see some of you folks apply the product placement tactic in much of your conversations. I think it's odd behavior to invest money in Blurt then turn around and invest time here. I often wonder what's holding you folks back from simply making something of what you think is an opportunity.
At a glance that forum looks depressing. Apparently I have 15k Blurt tokens somehow so yeah if you guys want to, go ahead and pump the price. Maybe you could use your 10k for that? It is Christmas...
This group is misguided. If they believe everyone is just doing this for money - they definitely should offer much more as an incentive.
You ended your holiday, just in time for the holiday season to start.
Wait, aren't we all here for the quick money? Should've stayed at steem, damn.
I am doing this because my online friend @frot was threatened with cyber stalking, he doesnt feel safe walking his dog anymore. he wont play victim but I seen this happen, the threats are real and curangel supports the one making these threats to stalk my friend frot in New Zealand.
have you see the person at the dog park yet @frot or did they stop threatening you?
Going away to live life in the middle of nowhere without an internet connection and a lot of fresh fish to eat was far more appealing than sitting here losing braincells over these goddamn platform politics.
Whatever though. Trending internal memos and people who hate the place but never miss a day of work in order to tell everyone about it, constantly.
But the odd downvote is the reason the kids aren't lined up around the block to get in here and show off their talents, not the atmosphere these people create and push on everyone else...
Good to see The Soulster is working hard on creating an echo chamber safe space for free speech or whatever though, for those folks, who wear the blinders, and can't seem to see everyone speaking freely.
I don't think the solution to downvoting legit content is more downvoting or outright censorship. Blacklists are much worse than downvoting.
I think that @ura-soul's approach is the correct one and will be voting for witnesses that support my values above.
Yeah I have done that as well but the problem has persisted for months after I changed that.
I don't agree with this type of thing, there is no need to blacklist people.
Well this same group of top 30 witnesses already destroyed the shares of @steemchiller so what's different now?
There was people who were affiliated with Justin Sun zeroed, so what's different now?
I'll show you a better way to spend less than Half that for some good results.
... seriously.
May as well trust you over anyone else here, at least you are not in bondage with a blockchain...
Yea.. I'm into Yoga and Cannabis. The Blockchain just keeps the Keys safe from Weirdos with Boundry issues.
What do you mean by blacklist?
The exact same thing that was done to Justin Sun and the accounts that made it through to hive. Start supporting a hard fork that would remove the accounts from the reward pool and zero them forever.
@frot was threatened with stalking by azircon, Curangel upvoted azircon when i almost had his posts zeroed... If we let them keep their shares, we are encouraging cyber stalking.
These are not only sycophants eager to impress their peers status quo but also willing to commit to psychopathic things like stalking to achieve their goals, as well as threats. This is textbook sociopathic behavior that has already escalated to stalking @frot while he walks his dog.
That is a fork, not blacklisting. All of those accounts are actually able to post here, they are not censored at all.
Yeah a fork to 0. Which would be enough, if they were not criminals who are threatening people on this platform.
Wow - you really expect witnesses to destroy the integrity of the entire Hive blockchain because you don't like downvotes?
Does azircon's stake represent an existential threat to Hive? Does a threat of cyber-stalking (or is it real stalking) somehow relate to azircon's stake?
To your offer, the answer is obviously no. You won't find any credible witness who will accept that offer. This post is a strange place to make it, too.
We will see strange in the coming downvote wars. I am just happy I sold while i was up 3000% so i don't have to watch a project crash and burn again with flaring egos in the blockchain space.
@ura-soul I guess @pfunk is deciding what comments are monetized on your post.
Yeah I don't think Hive should pay 0.001 of anything to someone trying to bribe a witness into blockchain treason.
So the distribution of wealth is a role you are active in?
if someone is actively engaged in the distribution of wealth, that would make a case for hive being a security.
Boring.
Thanks for letting us know and increasing the excitement.
Why did you censor this man @nonameslefttouse? Seems... hypocritical.
If you are asking me that question then I have already said that I am not opposed to downvoting per se, even for cases of 'disagreement' over rewards. What I am opposed to is downvoting that has the result of burying information that would otherwise have gathered a lot of attention and interest - not only does it repeat the problems of web 2.0, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.. The difference here is intent. My small downvote on a comment that is obviously massively overvoted by most people's sense of scale will do nothing to limit the reach of the comment and is so small as to barely be noticed anyway. Regularly having all of my efforts on Hive zeroed or virtually zeroed feels slightly insulting enough, but to then have the word boring massively amped feels like adding further insult to injury - it is just not a good faith action... I am more about the social than the money, which makes the claims of people here saying that I am 'only about the money' all the more ridiculous and irritating. But to be honest, I feel that is the goal - simply to irritate.. And so here we are.
The goal was not to irritate but to challenge. And I figured nonames would have some interesting things to say if his comment became controversial and I think I have been proven correct.
It just feels like caustic, biased and hypocritical attempts to bolster egos to me - but, hey, whatever floats your boat.
FWIW I've voted to rearrange the comment order a little bit. Sorry if voting nonames' comment diverted where you wanted this post's conversation to go.
No man. I was bored. If you look closely you'll see I was only joking around at first but then slowly as things progressed was placed in a position to take things a little more seriously. Sure there's some sarcasm injected here and there but that's just how I am when I'm bored. I enjoy lighthearted banter, as do many others, but some do take it all a little too seriously. Certainly wasn't trying to impress anyone or make myself look good. If I cared about that kind of stuff I probably would have taken a different approach, and maybe put on a tie.
You and Pfunk are talking about the comment positioning. On my screen it was shoved down to the bottom as well. That kind of stuff truly doesn't bother me though. I'm using PeakD as well. So not sure what's happening there. It's not a big deal though. Just know some of my sarcastic quips here and there aren't meant to be taken seriously, at all. I have a Canadian sense of humor.
I'm not even offended by your display of arrogance here, downplaying my efforts, and treating my words/presence as nothing but noise. I actually appreciate the honesty.
Us?
How many of you are inside there?
I was referring to the many people looking at this page via the internet.
Would these millions (and millions!) of The Soul's fans observing The Soul in action now be a little confused as to how The Soul is so heavily censored yet shining so bright, all at the same time?
To be clear, there have been times when a few of my posts were number one one 3speak's view count, number one on the Posh Twitter stats and number one on PeakD's view count. The outer world pays attention to the topics I cover in large numbers. The logic you are using that, in your mind, 'not enough' people look at my content might just have something to do with it being regularly downvoted.
An irony of the logic that says that my posts don't get 'enough' comments for... the subjective preference of some people, is that:
a) This and similar posts have 5-10 times the number of comments (at least) of all other posts on Hive at present.
b) There is no direct connection between the stake used to upvote posts and the number of comments being left anyway. Stakeholders have the capacity to point rewards and drive exposure to posts via trending - by design. Even if that results in posts in trending that aren't as engaged as others (of which there are often many that don't get downvoted), it's still the stakeholder's choice to upvote them and put them there.
In terms of 'censorship', as I pointed out in a previous post on the topic and as others have pointed out already in the comments under this post - the actual definition of censorship is deliberate suppression of information. This does not need to include total blockage of access to the information and can (and does) take the form of reach restriction on social channels (among other forms of control). Anyone who uses silicon valley social networks for anything of real value to humans has, at this point, experienced reach restriction as a result (whether they know it or not). The very long list of highly cited and respected doctors and scientists that have been blacklisted by silicon valley is a testament to that. Are they completely impossible to access online? Some may be, but generally they aren't. None the less, the censorship of their content dramatically limits the number of people that can hear them and that can therefore also support their work.
The idea that anyone questioning downvoting is just a greedy rewards pool rapist is extremely hypocritical, since the entire purpose of the rewards pool is to essentially empower content creators to make more, according to the subjective preference of the community. Obviously, content creators are going to want to access as much support as they can - ideally without being pushy or going against the wishes of the audience. Contrary to the assumptions of a minority of people here, I personally don't want to take rewards from a pool where people don't want me to have it and don't want my content.. I would just go somewhere else.
However, I have put years of my time into helping to build Steem and Hive and I still hold the vision that it can be a beacon of free thought, free speech, open mindedness, decentralisation and generally a human support service. So, I am here looking to build audiences. Clearly, since I regularly receive a lot of voluntary upvotes, there are plenty of people who value what I do - so I am still here. If the upvotes are removed and no-one comments, then there would be no point in me being here, but that is not the case.
Well yeah, if I sit here and have a conversation with you and several others who want to speak to me, of course the amount of comments will increase.
Try not to take all the credit. I'm a human, not just some number that only exists to make you look good or feel important.
There's no real need to overly explain yourself either. This wasn't a job interview.
So why did you send his comment to the bottom? Seems suppressive. I hoped you would stick to your guns and wouldn't downvote it but this proves an even bigger point.
You're being GASLIT and you just let this loser take the top part of your comment real estate with his "LOW EFFORT CONTENT"
His account ought to be Downvoted to Oblivion like all of it's "fiends" suggest. [sarcasm]
The blanket of useful idiots is filled with holes... IMHO.
I didn't 'let' anything happen here, I have no control over who upvotes the comments and pushes them to the top.
Sorry to goose you then 😎🥓https://shop.qux.tv/product/advanced-pre-release-quxtv/
I appreciate the work youre doing 🙏👍
Highest regards!
50:00 minutes is a good starting point.
Can i rely on you to handle onboarding these FreeSpeechActivists onto THIS Plaform?
Thanks for calling me a loser. I hope that makes you feel like a winner.
🖕😎🥓🖕
Remember that time in the past you pretended to be my friend? I do.
Thanks for showing me your true colors. Had a hunch you weren't being real with me.
How insulting.
If i met you in Real Life... I MIGHT say the word Friend. But I DON'T KNOW YOU!
For all i know you're with 👆THIS TEAM👆 who is "Flaggoting my account to oblivion" as THEY like to say.
So im filing some Paperwork to sue about 6 separate PARTIES, in 4 different countries... Not for any money mind you... JUST TO GET THEIR NAME AND ADDRESS OUT IN THE PUBLIC with Fancy Court orders. And also so that more evidence comes out about how HIVE works so well for many of the top people.
The TEAM of Flaggots have decided im bluffing and have gone ALL IN on the evidence collection so ANY side Distraction like this sets me off...
I'm VERY SURE we've not met...
We have very little interation.
I don't play on the chain to MEET... I work here.
Have a nice day.
Hello quitter! :)
Hi! Totally noticed I quit being on vacation again eh. Nothing gets past this one!
Good to see you, is what I'd say, if we all weren't so heavily censored here on the Hive thing, as they say, nowadays, for some strange reason.
Good to have you back. I hope you enjoyed your break :) I missed your energy (No sarcasm).
I missed my energy, too. It drains out fast though when having to observe the embarrassment that is 'trending' platform politics. From day one here on Hive I've suggested providing this community with a forum/community/tag whatever specifically designed to cater to all these 'local world problems' where people can freely air their grievances but at the same time have that content automatically pulled from general 'trending'.
But I suppose it's more fun to create the illusion of being oppressed by pretending there's only a handful of good folks around here. No better way to promote a project and the people you like than making everyone and everything else look bad or somehow inferior/flawed. (sarcasm)
Was a good break though, yeah. Home for the holidays, I guess.
I'm not sure why you feel so entitled to shape the trending page only to your own whims. Isn't that exactly the attitude of entitlement that is justifying the downvoting sprees here? If people posting challenging content are 'entitled' when they are upset by constant and unreasonable downvoting, then surely people who want to remove all content that doesn't tick their own boxes are also entitled, no?
I'm simply saying give platform politics a proper home so the issues can be tackled more efficiently, all while not chasing away potential new customers or stealing the spotlight from all those hard working types consistently desperate for an actual audience and engagement. Has nothing to do with entitlement, but I'm not surprised even a little bit to see you personally and purposefully spin what I said, take it completely out of context, and attempt to make me look villainous or somehow working against your flow. Many people, yourself included, would seemingly prefer to create a drama fueled spectacle rather than simply getting down to brass tacks. What I'm talking about has literally nothing to do with content ranking. I'm not saying remove content at all. I'm saying put it in a proper home where the right eyes can see it, rather than mixing it in with general content. This isn't some zany concept pulled from the mind of an irrational madman. Do you see boardroom meetings on Youtube trending page? No. So does that mean they don't have problems? No. A simple tab right at the top of all frontends that leads to this internal style content that only makes sense to a few on the inside is fully transparent and the exact opposite of something like censorship. Plus the internal content is no longer pushing general content to the back burner, which would effectively lead to far fewer reasons for anyone to even want to downvote it. I'm not saying remove rewards from it either. Nothing like that at all. I simply feel taking a more professional stance would be far more beneficial and productive. Always have.
P.S. This content isn't 'challenging' so please stop acting like a hero and champion of the people. A few folks on your list of 'freedom fighters' have been loud and in support of completely dismantling the entire reward pool, taking it all away, from everyone. So I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. At least one was also big into selling votes for the longest time, and all that did was drive thousands of good, organic talent away, forever, in order to replace it all with one of the biggest disasters I've even seen in the history of content distribution online.
Don't worry noname;
It won't be in trending for long. Please tolerate these folks a little bit...
Blah. Take a chill pill and let these folks have their fun. I don't mind suggesting there should be an open forum to help tackle internal issues, professionally, then being shot down, called names, misconstrued, eventually silenced, downvoted, yadda yadda yadda, by the very people claiming that approach should be frowned upon. When one attempts to offer possible solutions to problems people latch onto in order to get attention and make money, it's only natural to get pushed aside because an actual solution puts them out of work. Go with the flow and see where it leads. (Hint: Nowhere)
Maybe you should quit the quit, and come back. A certain quirkness is lacking from Hive which only you provided. @dreemit is also back - she introduced us iirc. I wonder if holidays are a trend setter for comebacks. If so, hope you stay around.
I've been seriously considering bringing my brand of content back to this place for awhile, again, like I usually do once I return from being away. Is the timing right though? That I'm not sure of. I've always felt so out of place bringing entertainment here and mixing it in with all this Celebrity Witness fake reality show platform politicking hatred nonsense. While I was gone @dreemit left me a comment saying the place just isn't the same anymore. Could it be because doom and gloomers are doing nothing but doom and glooming? I don't even know anymore...
I don't think it will ever be the same as the magical beginnings of 2016/17, but it is definitely improved from a couple years ago. I came back around September and I've had fun connecting with old friends and making a few new ones. And it is definitely Way better than any other social platform out there.
Definitely worth giving a chance :) Good to see you!
Majority of my memories here are good. Plus I got a to write and illustrate a never ending novel of nothingness, which really helped get me through some tough times. Maybe I'll add to it. Creative freedom truly knows no bounds here and much of my work is a prime example of that, hence why I'm so baffled when I come across these posts...
Whatever.
I don't know man, I was part of the drama - not as a protagonist but definitely as a part of - for a while and now that I am just a spectator writing about my own thing, I found that the Hive experience still had a lot to offer for people like us. Sounds a little ignorance is bliss and Poncio Pialteish, but sometimes it is better to not engage in drama if one can do nothing about a situation in order to enjoy all the other things a place has to offer. I'm not saying to turn a blind eye, but to not engage in order to keep one's sanity. It'sAllSoTiring.jpg but still, the timing is never wrong, especially when you're appreciated around the block.
I've always had a blast enjoying the good side. Posts like this act like that's nonexistent. I'd be away and out of the loop completely, for a long time. Got everything settled on a new device, signed in...
The first post I clicked, out of curiosity, was a promoted post published by someone loosely tied to the group of consistent haters/doom and gloomers. I had been mentioned there for some reason. There were a lot of comments that turned out to be that individual talking to itself nonstop but in the post itself was my avatar, some bullshit about me and a link to an old post of mine where I was talking about how frustrating it is to come here, produce actual content, then be shit on and thrown under the bus by these hater types. So yeah, shit on and thrown under the bus first day back. Following the trail of breadcrumbs trying to figure out what all this drama is about after some time basically led me straight to this post, so here I am, bored.
Sir be careful, words can make people censor themselves.
Actually, he downvoted me, censored me to death, and now I have no ability to speak freely. My life is over, basically. I guess the next step would be to write a post and include a list of people who I feel are special. Then I'll talk about my accomplishments and do everything in my power to convince people I'm a nice guy, so they listen to me and do as I say. I'll talk about how important free speech is, but as as soon as someone comes along to say things that don't sound like praise, I'll try my best to make them look like an idiot, then downvote their ass, and pretend I'm not being a hypocrite.
You're hired!
Damn man, condolences on the censorship. I liked your comment the best and gave it my upvote. But how evil it was for it to be downvoted and sent to the bottom once more. This comment thread has the most interesting discussion about the topic at hand but the OP has done his best to hide it. Too much challenge? Not enough yes-sir? I guess I know who I won't be voting as a witness.
What really hurts my feelings the most though is how I have this fancy new keyboard I won't be able to use. Pretty much everything I say just sounds like the spacebar now. I'm surprised you can even see me. Trapped within this void, I found myself, in the dark, feeling abandoned and alone with thoughts I'm not allowed to use anymore because a freedom fighter kicked my ass. And to top it all off with the hardest pill to swallow...
I'm not even as cool as abshamilton...
Did someone write something?
Nothing to see here, man. Just me, captivating an audience, by being bored, in some random comment section on the internet somewhere. I'll try to be more productive, tomorrow.
I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. Amen
Exactly, like ehm, literally all witnesses.
Ahahahahaha
I have my proxy as @informationwar and if you want to take a look at that feel free. I dont know all the people that are voted on it but I picked the best 30 I could at the time.
Personally I havent been downvoted that I can remember recently, but that's likely because I put a limit on how much my post can earn. I have been doing that as a proactive measure to avoid being downvoted because I likely will, as well as sometimes my posts are super short.
In general, I have noticed that the "old way of doing things" on Hive seems to be on the way out. People are wise to what Justin Sun did when he took over Steem. Some Hive people have massive amounts of Hive and we still have the same issues carried over from Steem. Some Steem issues went away and others like having the same people on charge who sank Steem remain a problem.
From what I see, the same top witnesses who allowed people to go on rampant downvoting and constantly cussing people out on Steem are starting to get the boot. I would really like if people stopped swearing at eachother when commenting back and forth. Everytime I see a top witness doing that it makes me cringe, because the chain looks like it's being ran by teenagers who want to resort to name calling and fighting on the playground. Again, as long as those people stop that, while also turning their downvoting efforts to focus on spam bots, plagiarism, illegal content then I am ok with them. Currently those things should be downvoted in my opinion.
This chain is 5.5 years old now. I think it's time to really evaluate who we vote for and who is in charge of it. Downvoting has never really been critically attacked for the censorship that it is, the definition of Censorship isnt "deleted", its Suppression. Many people continue to comment Hive is censorship free, censorship is built into the protocol as downvoting.
What happens when a post is downvoted? It is suppressed. What's the definition in all dictionaries for hundreds of years for Censorship? Suppression. So I'm going to continue to point this out over and over and over again.
Downvoting needs a huge rework.
In regards to plagiarism, graphic content not tagged as nsfw, or illegal content, downvoting is ok for that stuff. But theres better ways of dealing with these things like seeing content you dont like, Blacklists that each user already has access to utilize or muting someone so you dont see their content. There are global blacklists too.
Reducing rewards late after a post has had its time to shine (which often is subjective if it even deserved it to begin with and stakeholders should be able to use their downvotes in that regard as well) shouldn't be seen as surpression. Have you guys never used any other platforms with downvotes such as Reddit? Do people go around yelling censorship and surpression there when quality content gets missed or just isn't lucky enough to get to trending? They don't. It's even more important to use your downvotes here as there's also stake on the line that comes from all holders. Not just that but we also have the transparency to see who the downvoters are and judge their behavior and counter them if they're overdone or personal/malicious. If you get enough people to want to defend you depends on you. I'm sure the downvote system can be more finetuned but saying it's censorship and surpression isn't really the full truth. It's kind of like saying all upvotes are supressing any niche that doesn't get any rewards, like original porn content for instance. Damn all stakeholders who haven't incentivized it with enough rewards are the reason there is none on Hive! Surpression!!
Here's a couple recommendations I have - love the list so far!
@hextech - run by @rishi556, @sn0n & @edicted... I don't know the other two folks at all, but edicted is great imho, in terms of free speech, community support, and his content.EDIT: It was brought to my attention that rishi (and the hextech account intself) are downvoting content because it doesn't fit the mainstream narrative - and doubling down by down-voting comments about the fact that they are doing so.
@pizza.witness - run by @thebeardflex & @hivetrending - these two are creating all sorts of wonderful things for Hive, focused largely on the gaming side of things, but also just community building, engagement, and offering solutions. They tend to stay out of political discussion and such - in the proper way of just staying out of them, instead of trying to shut them down.
I swear I was supporting a witness who specifically ran everything on their own hardware at home (since Hive is SOOO heavily run on privex servers), but now I can't seem to find them, even though it still says I have 30 votes out... I'll circle back if more come to mind, or if I find that one :-)
EDIT: @shmoogleosukami is the other witness I was trying to think of.
A witness who runs on home equipment to help decentralize the blockchain, and who runs an HE witness, and various other projects on-chain. You can see their opinion down below in a reply, and here is a small excerpt:
I’m the one running my witness on my own PCs in my own properties.
I actually have geographic diversity now. One at home and the other at the office across the road.
I knew you did (not the multiple locations, that's awesome!), but there was someone pretty far down the list who had said that too... or maybe I'm just mis-remembering.
Anyway, we both support you, and I'm grateful for the awesome work you do, on chain and off!
You probably mean me as well, I also run everything from home.
Ah, yes! Did you remove it from your witness description?
Thanks for doing what you do!
I'll read your comment below momentarily :-)
Excellent, thanks. I will check out those two witness accounts now.
Running a witness server at home is not really the best idea because the average home connection to the web is not as reliable as a purpose built data centre. On the other hand, having all the nodes in the same data centre (Privex) is not ideal either. Originally, I was specifically sourcing servers with unknown companies in order to further decentralisation, but over time I've realised that this isn't really needed. For the moment I am using Privex too for ease of use and speed. As I move higher in the ranks and have more funds available as a result, I can put more time into the hardware and might look again at a different solution.
Just as a note, almost all of Privex's apps are open source and everyone is welcome to use and contribute to them, these also include Hive related apps (like Dockerized versions) as well.
Moreover, we support people self-hosting their own nodes and witnesses outside of Privex's server ecosystem (we have a Discord channel dedicated to this in the first place) so if anyone has their own servers and just need our help setting up their nodes and witnesses, we are available.
For the "everyone is in Privex" argument, we currently have 4 different data centers, in 4 different countries so, in theory, we're quite redundant :) -- To be honest, it's a lot better than sourcing servers from unknown sources where you do not know what might happen tomorrow, as well as the quality of their servers and datacenters in general.
Thanks for clarifying. From an absolute security perspective, a single point of failure is always a risk - rogue employees with axes to grind may be able to access all data centres - not that I am suggesting you have an axe or like to grind it. lol.
Fair point :) I am sure none of us have axes though people over at the datacenters, the technicians, might... Because, fire is always a hazard after all.
Nevertheless, when renting servers from anywhere, I advise carefully researching them to make sure you are getting what you are paying for. Not just "Very fast CPU, a lot of RAM and storage space" but more in-depth in terms of technical stuff, and for non-technical stuff, of course the second most important thing is the reliability of the company, their privacy policy (Do they sell your data for ads? Marketing? How long have they been in the market?) to locate the best one fitting your needs and budget.
Yes, there are definitely many poor hosting companies out 'there'!
I'm on a similar domestic Israeli Fiber to the home connection though via a different isp to @apshamilton .
Since I mothballed the isp's Spyware router and bought my own $20 Fiber modem, the connection has been rock solid. I actually have bigger problems with whole building power and I should also replace an old router.
Yes, the power supply is also a major issue in domestic situation. In general, data centers will have fallback solutions for all of the key infrastructure elements that just aren't available at home in most cases (unless you are Elon Musk or Bill Gates).
I have a UPS too.
There is really nothing that a data center has that you can’t easily duplicate at home.
But a data center will always be vulnerable to pressure from hostile parties.
Data Centres tend to have multiple lines in/out - plus be in hardened, high security facilities and have numerous levels of redundancy to facilitate nearly 100% uptime. You could recreate that at home but it would be extremely expensive and I doubt anyone on Hive has done so.
If you visit a Layer 3+ facility it will resemble a nuclear bunker more than an office :)
I will soon have redundant internet links by sharing my home fibre via wifi with the office across the road (which already has dual redundant internet).
I could easily and cheaply get a second fiber link at home too.
My apartment building is already highly secure with guards and nuclear, biological and chemical proof safe rooms - although my kids are in there not my Hive node :-)
Not really sure why a Hive node would need multiple layers of security in any case.
Overrewarded comment, hopefully you understand.
Yes, it was a bit excessive. :-)
This is a good example of an appropriate use of a balancing downvote. Countering a single perhaps overly generous upvote.
In contrast nuking lengthy original posts to zero because of political differences is what I am concerned about.
It's almost as if it was a mistake, and communication could have been used instead. Weird?
Removed the upvote, I was simply on the wrong account when I placed it.
Bad Rishi, bad!
Hextech downvoted me for questioning the efficiency of the vaccine more than once. They are not free speech. Especially rishi who is probably a sociopath if I had to guess from he responded to my questioning of the downvote.
I'm sure observers here would like to look at that, do you have any links? Thanks
https://www.peakd.com/@phusionphil/boycott-the-witness-who-is-against-questioning-the-vaccine
Thanks, I will take a look.
Lol they even downvotes this comment. Make sure you look at the comments before they were edited too, these whales like to redact their statements sometimes and the original comment speaks to a different truth than the edited one.
Thanks, noted. I've removed my vote for their witness, will edit my comment above, and will include them on the do not support side of my upcoming witnesses post.
I wonder if there is even 1 person in the top 30 witnesses who has any experience with PR.
Not that I am aware of, though maybe.
I'm just observing the downvotes on this comment which seem to confirm what you are saying.
Yeah. Those folks downvoting in comment sections sure play dirty, eh.
Lol, I have noticed that a lot of the downvote complainers are quite promiscuous downvoters themselves. But its ok, if they're doing it... :OD
I downvote because it's the only way I have been able to get people to start having a discussion about the flaws of DPOS.
Until they are loosing money they don't seem to care about anything.
I especially liked the part near the beginning of Hive and for several months, any artist, photographer, personality, entertainer, and the like, got downvoted heavily just for doing a good job and making the place fun, while this crowd sat on their hands saying nothing, ignoring it, turning a blind eye to it, and sometimes even mocking those on the receiving end claiming they deserved it, most likely because the one downvoting would often upvote their political drivel. Funny how that works...
Funny how I only started downvoting on a regular basis after I was zeroed for weeks on end.
Yeah they are psychic leeches, the type you find on the bottom of your boot after a revolution.
God... damn it!
Dissention in the ranks!
I'm happy to adjust my statement (again) and go back to supporting your witness if this is addressed.
I don't know your two partners at all, but I've always appreciated your content, comments, and presence on the chain.
Rishi goes on a self-righteous rampage once and a while.
Kid needs to chill out.
Luckily most devs (including my devs) are quite poor and I mostly get to run the show.
Can we buyout rishis interest in this witness? (to remove the bad actor)
Technically likely but logistically no.
If that makes sense.
Rishi does most of the work :D
Or at least did quite a bit.
Don't worry about it though I have big plans.
I don't think @hextech's 14k stake is too big of a problem at this point.
A vote from me is what? x10 that?
Perhaps I could work more on my database to track these things.
Great post and I guess you’ve proved that you either put up or shut up. Bravo for your actions. I’ve been watching what’s going on and adding my 2 pence in when I feel it necessary. As far as I know and this is how it’s always been sold is that Hive/Steem are/where immutable and sensorship free. Downvotes were solely for those gaming the system, plagiarism and copyright. Since Covid it’s been open warfare on those speaking out against “the science” but without any active debate, just downvoting. I’ll certainly take a look at my own witness votes with your post in mind. I have nothing against those who choose to be against free speech but I can’t stand by and vote for them as a witness while they are acting the way they are. So far I’ve only seen one of these major stakeholders giving any sensible justification for his actions. As for the rest I think their attitudes are way out of line. I hope this is a wake up call for them but I suspect it will only provoke their egos.
Thanks and thanks! You have described the ethos that was present on Steem and for most people seems to still be on Hive - however, various 'inner circle' people decided that Hive has changed and that the 'new normal' involves unrelenting downvotes for whatever you feel like. Obviously this was not widely discussed or agreed upon. In fact, this is exactly the stance that @guiltyparties took before pointing me to the Hive whitepaper which actually has a section in which actually ommits the downvoting part of the consensus forming of rewards payouts (in a key section of the document). GP stated that he would have an urgent meeting with me to discuss the downvoting situation several weeks ago, but has been silent since then.
I would also like to point out that SILENCE is exactly the response from most of these characters, including @acidyo after I left a lengthy rebuttal to him recently. But hey, when you are king of the castle, you can do what the fuck you like right? I'm sure that never leads to any problems.. The plebs are just peasants. lol
Wow this comment has moved on. Nonetheless, this is the most interaction I’ve ever had from a post/comment but I get the feeling I wasn’t needed for it to happen 🤣
End of the day downvotes CAN be used for whatever someone wants them to be used for, but every action has a reaction, and that goes for everyone involved. I understand where acidyo is coming from and for me he’s by far not the main protagonist in this, he’s just the only one who’s been big enough to argue his point with some sensible reasoning and for that seems to be taking flak that is more deserving for others. On the other hand, to say that anyone’s content is worthless and brings no value is personal opinion and certainly not a good enough reason to downvote someone to nothing, and besides, if that were true and it was worthless content it wouldn’t need to be downvoted because it would get no upvotes in the first place. By downvoting for that reason and particularly to that extent, those who are doing it are proving the point that hive is not decentralised.
How have I been silent throughout this drama? I've been busy inviting new users to Hive this week so excuse me if I don't have time to reply to your walls about people complaining that they're getting less rewards for providing no value to Hive.
You have been the only one to actually engage and reply, which despite your propensity to resort to name calling and ad hominem attacks - is a step above pretty much everyone else.
I was referring to this comment when I tagged you here. I am getting tired of people publicly posturing that they are engaging while in truth they aren't - isn't that the exact behaviour that people get downvoted for by the guardians of the blockchain?
Well look at my wallet transactions, obviously I'm not done onboarding.
Yes I do downvote people who are just leeching rewards for content no one consumes, shocking I know. Enjoy centralizing witness votes.
I have no idea why you think this post is about centralising anything - the majority of witnesses that will be voted for here are lower rank ones who simply share the intent of decentralisation. Claiming that voting for people who support decentralisation is actually centralisation is completely disingenuous and misleading in the extreme. In reality, Blocktrades has massively more stake than I am able to direct here and he votes for you.. So I presume from your totally rational and well thought out comment above that you will be petitioning him to remove his vote from you in order to avoid centralising the witness votes? Awesome!
Many witness votes being concentrated in the decision making of a few = centralizing. Is it too hard to just tell people what to vote instead of making their decision for them? Didn't you guys learn anything from that korean proxy?
Also, go ahead and fuck yourself for this. It doesn't take a long time to figure out what I do for this chain and the time I spend on anyone and everyone to enjoy their Hive experience and receive fair rewards. Just because you happened to be one of the cunts I disagreed of countering big downvotes on doesn't mean I treat other people the same way. 99.999% of them aren't told what I tell you and kennydipshit, lucylin and some other entitled overly loud assholes who want to keep earning on Hive at any cost. In the end it's all about that for you guys I suspect, most people know the effort I put in and have put in for Hive, it's inflation distribution and decentralization. If you can't take me calling you a cunt then feel free to call me things as well but if you're going to make it sound like I treat people the way I treat assholes, then I'm going to make it clear that that's not true and I'm sure I have plenty of people who'd back me up on that. Unfortunately most don't read your content.
You have come here numerous times and accused me of all kinds of fraud, lying and abusive behaviour - dropped acidic verbal attacks and claimed to know all about me without ever attempting to engage in anything approaching a friendly manner or even reading my posts (or actually knowing anything about me). This is not a healthy or even 'normal' way to relate to people, so I'm sure you can appreciate why I might be a bit annoyed by the situation. I only know a limited amount of information about you and I aim to not judge anyone, but I'm sure you can appreciate how what little I do know of you is pretty caustic.
This isn't 'all about the money', but it seems to make no difference how many times this is said as the alternative would shatter your narrative.
I don't see any value in judging people and throwing abusive names around - it serves no purpose other than to ineffectively attempt to process emotions within the one doing it. Like others here, I am more concerned by the effect that 'spicy' and abusive language has in the minds of onlookers than I am actually bothered by it personally. Free speech includes the right to throw around pointless abuse, but it doesn't negate having to deal with the effects caused by those actions.
The idea that you are loved for 'helping everyone receive fair rewards' is a bit big headed - surely you can see that right? Proof of brain is a consensus mechanism meant to reflect the combined views of potentially large groups of people. Regardless of your intentions or how positively you view yourself, please never forget that national dictators will tend to also tell everyone they are loved for looking after everyone.
I could not personally say what you are saying here without feeling I sound like a politician who is trying to sell others on him having them do as he says. I'm not trying to annoy you here, I'm just genuinely baffled how we can have such wildly different senses of self perception.
There really isn't any need for conflict and attempts to inflame here. I will just continue to operate in mine and others best interests, as I understand them, within the law of the code of Hive and continue to suggest changes that people can voluntarily go along with or not. You say you are doing the same in your own way - the outcome is what consensus decides.
I will only add that it would be nice if this could be done in a peaceful and respectful way.
So you say you know very little about me yet you say my self perception is wild? I'm not one to go around often saying what I do for Hive, it's quite obvious for people who are involved so it doesn't need mentioning. I felt the need for you to know in this situation since your view of me is obviously flawed because you see me as a mass downvoter and "censor" which you've many times stated but never mentioned how limited and seldom my downvotes appear and my focus mostly being on inactive "influencers" who are more fake than the content they produce.
I'm okay with your other comment and I doubt this will become anything big since your community is rather small compared to the stake being used towards it and I doubt it'll grow as there hasn't been much sign of it in the last few years so feel free to do what you want. I've made it clear by now the dangers of proxy'ing witness votes to people en masse but I don't think you'll get to the levels of the korean stakeholders.
Anyway, I tried to be peaceful in this comment even if you undermined my activity on Hive based on barely knowing anything about me before all this disagreement of reward era occurred I assume.
Sorry but I'm pretty sure I've read your posts early on and wasn't instantly aggressive, especially the one about the word censorship and how it may exist on Hive. If it got aggressive over time then it's probably cause of things you've said. Not my fault most of the content you guys produce gets so little engagement and possibly consumption that the thing that pops in my head is that the possibility of sockpuppeting to pretend to be spreading that stake around but in the end it going to the same few people exists and is highly likely. Social activity is something we focus on with our curation after years of bloggers just dumping content no one reads and getting autovotes/"friend" votes and not giving a shit about anything else and taking it for granted. It's also not something you can prove, obviously, that's probably what makes it something easy to accuse you of so I'm not really defending it being a great retort just in general disagreeing with your ways and adding vulgarity on top of it. I'm passionate about Hive, not to a point where I'd go against reason but if there's suspicion that people are acting against it for ulterior motives then it does trigger me quite a bit because I've seen most reactions to downvotes over the years and when it's not complete morons acting out it's not as easy to deal with it but in the end it's been proven that it's mostly about the rewards and not the things they suddenly come up with when the downvotes start happening.
Well, you had my vote before and I am glad you are now getting even more support! Good luck with your witness project. I hope that all sides are able to make a step closer to each other, instead of creating an even deeper schism.
Thanks, yes, teamwork and mutual understanding is required here!
I wanted to add another comment to this with some other thoughts for historical context.
When Trump won in 2016 there wasn't almost any internet censorship going on in the USA. In fact, in many places the Trump communities grew exponentially and were getting more engagement and were larger than left leaning communitities. Most of the people who work in Silicon valley are left leaning and they don't like the rise of all the right wing/libertarian/anarchist stuff.
Soooo, the censorship starts somewhere around 2017 from what I can remember, it was on Youtube first mainly and what Youtube did was take about 90% of the views on "channels they don't like" and give them to channels they do like. Years later this turned into CNN/ABC/FOX News and others getting all the views. Corporations are now getting the views/search results/trending because Youtube changed the algorithm to do that.
The censorship of individuals is at the highest it's ever been. This is the reason why everyone is a lot more upset about the downvoting happening on Hive in 2021 than they were on Steem 2017 201i 2019 2020 etc
There arent many free speech platforms out there. The censorship is rising exponentially. None of us cam afford to sit back and hope it doesnt come for us anymore, it is already affecting us
Our YouTube got a strike for medical misinformation despite it being the truth. Fauci presided over the aids epidemic when that happened decades ago in the USA. At the time there were life saving drugs and treatments that were very low cost that he didnt allow to be approved, instead only allowing super expensive treatments. We have him doing it AGAIN with covid 19 denying ivermectin works for it. There is actually. Huge blockbuster movie that covered this whole thing about the aids epidemic Fauci was in charge of, movie is The Dallas Buyers club. Where a few guys help out people with aids by getting them to exercise, ear healthy, take vitamins. Aids makes attacks and lowers your immune system, doing all these things improves your immune system, Fauci at the time went after these guys and tried to get em charged with crimes.
When we have people with huge stakes down voting and they dont know history like this, THEY are the conspiracy theorists and are factually incorrect.
It is our duty to tell the truth no matter the cost and we cannot afford to have huge downvotes censoring that any longer, the stakes are too high. Please just stop downvoting content you dont understand or dont like, leaving it alone is the way to go.
Actually, Youtube has been censoring content since (iirc) at least before 2010 - there were many researchers who I followed who just got deleted by Youtube at that time (and ever since). It is more common for accounts to be sandboxed and reach restricted, so they are definitely censored without them even realising most of the time. This is the norm for Youtube and occurs on a large scale. I proved this by viewing my videos and comments via Tor - the anonymous browser. Many of my comments are invisible to the wider world, but visible to me. This has been the case for probably over a decade.
The pattern you described with Fauci is the EXACT same pattern that occurred with Morris Fishbein, ex head of the AMA: https://rense.com/general19/enemy.htm
He was putting up posters of people who were treating cancer using non toxic methods, saying they are public enemies and ruining their careers (hurting patients in the process). Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he was trying to acquire the patents on their recipes in order to steal their thunder. In general, these people are obsessed by personal power, so they crush anyone who has it in an attempt to take it and use it for themselves.
Personally, I'm just sitting back and watching for me most part. I used to.. just downvote a lot of 'truth' and 'conspiracy' stuff but now I just don't bother.
Because in the end.. It's up to the individual to actually have a brain and make up their own mind.. I'm of the firm belief that a lot of people will just be moronic nutcases in my eyes but hey. that's their choice and their life.
I'd probably be able to counter a lot of the conspiracy stuff like debate wise.. If I felt it was worth my time, but I don't so meh.
I will say that if people want to downvote because they disagree with something then that's fine. Just like if people want to self vote.. that's fine.
Basically.. what I'm saying is. if the hive software allows it then it's ok. (except plagiarism and you know theft and all that) With that in mind zeroing post that are CLEAR Abuse, spam, plagiarism or reward pool farming. it's K
The distribution of tokens is still... Very bad. These massive pools of HP used for political reasons or otherwise is.. It sends a message, it has reputational consequences, it effects the way people feel and perceive hive. So the people in control of those account need to think very carefully about how and when they downvote. Ofcourse.. they are also free to do as they please because that is HIVE.. you do what you like. the software allows it, it doesn't care what you downvote.
It's just the people who care. if they care. Some do, some don't, some just ignore it.
I donno.. It's messy imo.
My personal view on downvotes is it should only be used to null stolen content, plagiarism, spam/reward farming.
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I have found over decades of looking into denied topics (that lazy thinkers try to write off as 'conspiracy theory') that when the details really emerge and logic is applied, there are a very large number of topics which are clearly provable through the weight of the evidence to be legitimate and deeply concerning issues that are being completely denied by corrupt establishments and vested interests. The idea that the world's richest people and governments are 'perfect angels' is absurd and history shows us over and over again that these people tend to be involved with extreme evil that is of a level that most people's mental filters aren't calibrated to assess and accept. Cognitive dissonance is king for many people at present.
That being said, there are many claims of wrongdoing that are nonsense - so it is relatively easy to disprove them.
Most economic oriented projects reflect the core imbalance that we have inherited on this planet and stake will tend to be used to try to manipulate public perception. Key for humanity is to understand this and to think/act wisely in response.
That is a very healthy way of dealing with differences in opinion. I really like your attitude. It is tough to reach the hand to somebody (or let them keep doing what their doing), when you think that person is believing in nonsense. We would live in a way better world if all of us would behave like that and the need for conspiracies and debunks would probably evaporate into nothingness.
Do you consider questioning the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine to be conspiracy or practicing informed consent?
It's practicing informed consent, I've personally seen enough data to come to the conclusion that the vaccine is effective enough to warrant getting.
I have done a lot of drugs in my life that are hard on my heart, I can't risk the heart inflammation that comes with the Pfizer or Moderna shot.
When I post about myocarditis is when I have been flagged, even though u have the Japanese Health Minister as a source for that claim.
Yeah, The NHS also forgot to inform my dad of that as well, he has a heart condition, Thank fully he had no side effects from the vaccine and getting covid is far worse for him than the side effects of the vaccine.
EDIT: iirc actually he had the astra-zenica one.
He got covid and was bedridden for a week, this was also back when we didn't know or rather the news never told use about how covid can inflame the heart as well.
Generally the distribution of information from governments has been pretty terrible and inconsistent throughout the pandemic.
I appreciate that some people will for some reason think I am lying here, but I genuinely know many more people who have been paralised or died from the shots than have even been mildly ill with COVID19. Even I am surprised because I don't go looking for these people - so if it's true for me then I don't see how it's not true for a lot of other people. Granted, I stay away from large groups of people anyway - so the people I know mostly do too.. but still. I know of about 5 people who have been sick with COVID19 and I know of nearly 10 personal friends of friends or relatives who were seriously ill or died from the shots (as in immediately or within hours).
The gov stats (as far as can be ascertained, considering the inaccuracy of the data collection) confirm this in a few likely ways, which my readers will know - but if you only go as far as believing what you are told in the mainstream, then you will think I am making this up.
I did my own open vaers search, even the censored results I got, that are 10% estimated of the real numbers, were enough to stop the use of any other vaccine in history.
25 deaths was the highest deaths allowed from any vaccine in history to my knowledge from the H1N1 vaccine in 2014-2015.
A family friend, hasn't been able to walk since the age of 10 or 13, having constant surgeries for any hope of using his legs again. This was a reaction, unique to him (only 3 to 5 other kids had a reaction that bad) it was a normal vaccine that many of us have, even my self.
After this story has been explained to me 100s of times, the family has questions that 5 doctors declined to answer. To this day the kid doesnt know what he cant walk. It seriously fucks me up inside when I think about him trying to live a normal life, and with no answers from 5 doctors all of whom will NOT for any reason even consider the vaccine. 1 of the 5 doctors told them they will be honest, they will loose their license to practice if they so much as question the efficacy of ANY vaccine NOT JUST THE COVID vaccine.
This is a systemic problem and the public should be cautiously critical to the point of not hampering the science.
My personal reason for heart conditions is playing into this phenomenon that can only be explained by bureaucratic red tape and greed. I actually think vaccines are very interesting like the polio vaccine, yet at the same time want to make sure there is accountability for those who are making these injections.
Just like a street drug dealer is charged with man slaughter for his drugs giving a heart attack, I feel a doctor who administered the vaccine in his clinic should be accountable for that manslaughter if someone has a heart attack. At the end of the day, its your doctors responsibility to inform you, not the media.
Well shit... I must admit, I haven't paid much attention to witnesses or what they were for. But hell if Hive is turning to this cancel culture bull shit, then let's turn it around while we can. I'm on board.
While I don't like to proxy out my votes to anyone, I took the opportunity to review my witnesses in light of the recent developments, and align them with my own views (supporting free speech, of course). I think the last time I looked at them was when we were forking away from Steem. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my votes were already following your recommendations, to a great extent. So I thought, I'd also vote for @ura-soul as witness, but guess what: you already had a blue check mark next to your name, too.
So now, what's next? I'm thinking of removing my delegations from the two curation services that only use it to nuke posts to zero because they don't like their content.
Hehe, you have impeccable taste! ;)
It would be a good idea not to delegate to groups who are being so reckless, yes. You can always delegate to @freezepeach to push things the other way if you like.
Well, as you can probably guess, not too long ago, before all this crap came to the surface, it didn't seem like a bad idea at all. But we all do whatever we can, and that includes voting with our feet, our wallets, or in this case or delegations. So @freezepeach it is. Let's see... So far I quite like what they've reblogged.
Excellent, I will let @r0nd0n, Prince of the Peach, know. :)
!gif standing applause
Via Tenor
Hey brother!
I'm not sure whether you can see this comment. But i suggest you take look at @actifit. Such a great community and great leader @mcfarhat.I can share 100 incidents in last few months, where Hive friends have mentioned about Actifit helping them and improving their lives. Actifit is a real use case and game changing idea eying on 450B $ fitness industry. Latest addition to Actifit is the launch on BSC to bring vast audience onto this wonderful hive blockchain. It is trying to incentivise more and more users for motivating to move by addition of more and more branches to core ecosystem like Actifit Defi which was launched in November 2021. There has been so much love from the community in recent times and this project want to replicate it back as as much as possible. I you willl surely keep this name on you top priority list.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't know much about Actifit's Witness operator in the sense of free speech. This proxy is specifically for witnesses who are willing to stand up for free speech in the fullest way possible - I'm happy to check out any evidence for any witness that they fall into this category. Do you know of any links for Actifit that would fit this criteria? Thanks.
I prefer to control my votes by myself. But yes, I have to check votes after some time from the last adjustment.
Is there anything more to say? I use downvotes rarely, but I use. For spam or plagiarism. But we live in the strange times. There are blocked / deleted post of university professors by youtube, vimeo in our country. Just for only different opinion. And I can't be familiar with it. The government should serve to the citizens. Not the other way...
Everyone should think about quotation:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yes. Should. The reality is that the government suppress/oppose us. I live with multiple disabilities under the local minimum wage in Hungary. I receive a low, pension-like income, which is approximately only $250 USD per month, and nowadays I also work as a packager in a four hours per day part time job, but my total income is approximately only $470 USD per month, while the local minimum wage is approximately $550 USD.
Greetings from Hungary.
I'm sending greetings from Czech ;)
I'm a bit busy today, but I would like to discuss some topics with you later. If you use Discord or Telegram, we can chat later this week.
Have a nice day
Solid move and an effective way to rally the community. This is how it should have been handled from the beginning. I hope the others are watching.
{Edit}
Thanks for the reminder and suggestions. It prompted me to review my votes and switch some around. I had only chosen 9, now I'm supporting 16. I'd really like to see the witness list shuffling consistently, because we can't allow these important ambassadors to become complacent.
Yes, variation would help a lot - but there isn't enough clear benefit for users to motivate them to do that. Maybe a 'Hive O'Clock News' show that tracks the politics of witnesses on the chain would help inspire people. lol
That's actually a great idea. Politics here is just as important as irl. I'd like to see more campaigning by the lower ranks to make the top 20 step up, communicate better and more often, while reminding the userbase of their responsibility. Since voting is always ongoing, so should the campaigns.
Fundamentally, 'representative democracy' has always been a terrible and flawed idea.. lol. But as long as it exists, it requires vigilance and engagement, yes.
Guess who reached out to jamesc privately to get him to change his witness votes, at which point he proxied ura-soul? Guess who also reached out to 100s of thousands of stake scattered across more than a dozen people, to do the same?
But I'm sure I'm just being paranoid by assuming your comment was directed at me (and probably others as well)
😜
You're not paranoid. I was referring more to the approach than the specific act though. There are still other options available as well.
I understand - and I just wanted to make sure it was very clear that you can take both (or many more) approaches, and I have been.
I have been speaking privately to witnesses, stakeholders, creators, and people who aren't on Hive yet (including the 20 or so I was in the middle of onboarding when this started) the whole time, coming up with solutions and alternatives - even though I don't really see a point.
And I've been out helping to shine more light on the problem(s), the conversation, and the actions of the folks in power (which they are generally more than happy to put on display for us)
Hive is lost. Steem was lost. From launch.
Basing governance & voting power on $take means it's never going to be decentralized (truly), and that there will always be a large power disparity (which will always favor those with the most power in Babylon to buy stake with.) That inherent flaw in the basic logic of this chain means that it can never live up to the hype/mythology of itself - without a fresh start.
I've wanted to leave Hive/Steem (both to create that better alternative and to get off the computer) for years - and this was the final straw that allowed me to fully release my attachment to this place...
And then I was bombarded by people asking me to stay, asking me to help fight/change things, and thankfully, actually showing a lot of interest in the alternative I've been designing - which is a first :-)
So, I'm pushing forward, and I guess I'm helping lead the rally to decentralize Hive more and get some abusers out of governance roles - but I see it all as simply moving furniture on the Titanic.
I'm just hoping as this becomes more and more clear, that the momentum for a real alternative keeps picking up - and instead of bringing 2 new whales into Hive (they wanted to try to win the stake-battle, but we are way too far behind to ever catch up), we're building out a dev budget to make this thing real.
Creating your own is another valid act, which I mentioned in the comment section for one of your posts. I'd consider how you present it would be your approach, or at lesst at the level I meant(the communication). I'm very interested in such a project.
I agree that 'as is' Hive cannot be decentralized. That being the case, forks/updates are possible to change this. The benefit of this approach is better understanding for the userbase by an ongoing campaign and if successful, starting off with a ready-made userbase.
Growth of a new platform will be very slow and require many to make a new home, which the majority are resistant to, unfortunately. That being said, a new platform further decentralizes the social sphere even more.
I wish you luck and hope to be kept in the loop. Will you be sharing your progress here or elsewhere. Note: I don't/won't use neither discord nor telegram...
Good luck. I will probably keep my votes under my control but I will be watching who you're voting for.
Another great post - worthy of a repost and various mentions - this is an action plan and that's what people need! It is important we all give this our best shot!
I recommend editing your previous post and including a link to this one as a possible action plan to sort out this downvoting/free-speech/POBvPOS dilemma.
And as always, happy blogging!
I have been coming across this post (and were linked by multiple people over a period of time) and I wanted to say a few things.
First of all, I believe that free speech is one of the most important aspects of our lives. Not just on the internet, but in real life as well. Nevertheless, one of the crucial aspects of free speech, in general, is that, just because free speech exists, does not mean there are no consequences for it. After all, I believe that it is important to mention that while opinions can exist, no one is obligated to agree, or disagree with them. However, this does not mean that free speech, no matter what it points to (agreeing or disagreeing with something) should be suppressed.
I think the biggest plus that Hive offers to its users is a platform where no one has to worry about their post being "deleted by admins" because the person wrote their opinion on a subject and it contradicts the opinion of a site's admins. Hive does not have that. Thanks to the nature of blockchain, what people say, will stay.
Since the first day, I announced my witness, I have always advocated for having more witnesses. More witnesses mean better decentralization, both on a technical level and a political level. Witnesses, just like everyone, have a say in the development and advancement of Hive as a platform.
As a witness and as a regular human being, I may not agree with everything that is written on Hive. But Hive's biggest strength, its immutability is something I will fight for. Is downvoting a post on Hive "censorship?" In my opinion, no. It is not. We always argue that anyone, at any given time, can stake Hive Power and it is up to them what they would like to do with it. If they want to upvote every post left and right, so be it. The other way around is the same. Do we need anything implemented on a technical level to counter this? In my opinion again, no.
I am not a native English speaker, so, when I hear the word "censorship" what comes to my mind is that restricting access, completely, to a certain item due to certain reasons by people in power. Hive, when we think about it, does not have that. Especially when we have more and more witnesses every week, adding their own decentralised nodes to the chain pushing the notion of immutability further.
On the other hand, if we wanted to talk about the "viewership" aspect, I agree. Certain communities as well as the trending page attracts quite a lot of people. This does not mean there's censorship or an "attack on free-speech" in my opinion. Anyone can create their own community to get around "community mutes" since they would be the community's manager. For trending and/or negative reputation related stuff... Those are all frontend. A developer can certainly build a frontend that completely ignores downvotes. This is, at the moment, technically possible. Utilizing Hive to its fullest. The data is available, the data will never be censored. It is up to frontends to utilize it however they see fit. It is possible that some people may agree with it, some people may not. But... does it really make a difference? They would definitely be opinions to be respected. If a person likes it, feel free to use it. If they don't, feel free to use an alternative frontend. The possibilities are endless on Hive.
"But rewards?" if anyone asks, has to remember that on Hive, rewards are never promised. Our biggest strength on Hive is the fact that I mentioned before. Whatever you say, will stay.
This text ended up longer than I would like to admit, still, there are a lot of things to say about this topic. However, as an advocate for decentralisation, I said it before, and I'll say it again. If anyone has the necessary experience or skillset to host a Hive node and have the means for it, please go ahead and become a witness and contribute to the technical and political decentralisation of our chain.
Eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.
I remember you had developed the impression that I was a partisan and thus deemed my thoughts of little value. Now you are being downvoted by an account touting the label of alt left.
It slightly amuses me but perhaps to you the irony is lost. Don't get me wrong. I wholeheartedly agree with you on the matter of opposing ideological downvotes but think you had pegged wrong, my dude.
I think you may eventually come to terms with which side of the spectrum you are catching the most downvotes from as well as those that are downvoting others for political reasons.
Not to suggest the GOP doesn't censor. Try going to Parker and posting about the ZOG in the US and think you will find out.
I criticize both sides where I believe criticism is needed. One caveat is it is difficult to ascertain to what degree you are being downvoted on an ideological basis versus politically agnostic disagreement of rewards.
Do believe if I took the time to craft thoughtful posts with some degree of verbosity aligning to my political ideology that I would likely be subjected the the same. I've had friends that have told me they think I may be spared on because they know that I will continue my work on moderation incentivization e.g. anti-abuse, a mutually beneficial interest.
All things aside, I respect what you are trying to do here so have upvoted 100%. 💪
Ahoy! I don't recall all the words involved in the conversation you are recalling, but I think it was more to do with religious beliefs than politics. I don't really adhere to left/right thinking - as I have said many times. The left/right wing concept is from the French revolution and outside of that context has little practical meaning to me. Different people apply it in totally different ways and it misses the mark when it comes to identify the key factors when devising systems for human support. Politics itself is mostly a waste of time since if politics were meant to solve people's problems, they would, by now - be mostly solved.
Note: For me, 'right' is 'empire builders' and you can rest assured that the biggest censors also try to build empires.
There's a reason why FB and Twitter want the most timid content while erasing dissenting voices - it is partially to appease advertisers and partially to please the board who have interests in the corporations who look bad when dissent is allowed. In other words, they are professional lie systems.
Presumably the avoidance, by some Hive characters, of such real world discussion on key topics that might challenge the mainstream narratives follow similar patterns or might at least just be based on uncourageously trying to emulate silicon valley sites without understanding that Hive will not equal those sites as long as it simply duplicates their agendas.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to communicate and co-create with more than a tiny percentage of people I am contact with - so I have to try to filter them out rigorously based on what I feel is their intent to view expansively and to radically re-assess pretty much everything we have been taught or programmed with.
That's literally me except the programmed part because my metaphysical disposition is one of divine determinism.
What I mean is there is a God or higher being if you will that orchestrates everything even to our most minute thoughts. He's just determined that you and I would arrive at different conclusions.
Concerning the world, I question EVERYTHING. Concerning my God that has decreed I would find a treasure in His work, I dare not.
I know we have discussed this topic in lengthy discourse and I am glad to continue doing. You and I differ from those that you have called out as we promote this dialogue.
In such, is where the truth is mined if you will. I think every person had some degree of malleability to what they believe but, for others, they are inhibited by their own hubris.
I will say that according to the metaphysical doctrine to which I hold it is impossible that I can think anything otherwise than believe that Jesus Christ is LORD and died for me over 2000 years ago.
So, in that sense, you are correct. I think it would be a fool's errand to try to convince me otherwise because my doctrine properly understood does not allow for apostasy.
When someone believes on Christ's death and that alone for righteousness, that's what I would call a "done deal". Thus, I understand why you had chosen to disengage because you had rightly judged you would be unable to change my mind.
This isn't about you or me. The question becomes what Christ's death if it were for anything what was it for precisely? I am a wretch no better than any other man.
If ye think yourself higher than what Jesus did or do not believe He did die on the cross for certain person's, there is nothing else I can say but wish you the best in your quest for righteousness.
Behold the powah!
@ura-soul I'm with you Boo-boo
post will probably be zeroed on day 6
Day 6, Hour 22 of 24.
Wonder if the timing of these downvotes are automated or if there's some hateful little scion of downvoting with a timer set waiting for the very last hour before clicking the dreaded downvote
looks good!
@tipu curate
Awesome, keep up the good work.
thank you very much for the post, have a nice day
Cool
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Vote for Curie & Leofinance! Cuz they are da best! Details will be provided upon request. lol.
Too tired to make a case right now.
It's a good start!
Theres obviously nothing wrong with downvotes removing rewards as that is an absolute right of every stakeholder to determine in what direction the reward pool is distributed, so the question here really is:
How should we treat that occurrence thats actually more of a symptom of the frontend algo problem then onchain facts, that are downvotes..
Im sorry to say but most of the recent posts from your supporters about censorship, retaliation towards @acidyo, @ocd, @curangel, etc., trying to portray them as tyrants, are nonsense. Especially this guy here trying to bribe witnesses into destroying the chain.
How should we as a community treat the current right of community members to affect content placement on the trending pages and elsewhere? Thats something that can be discussed. Its a matter of quite some importance.
Even though you claim to stand for freedom, you must surely be aware that by supporting the idea that the community cannot affect content placement youre essentially removing one of their ways of expressing themselves. A way for them to affect how Hive portrays itself.
Shouldnt that be a right of community members?
I have never said that the community should not be able to affect content placement - I have always said the total opposite. I have only ever said that I support POB and I have said multiple times (on this page even) that I am not even against downvoting for 'disagreement over rewards'. For some reason most of the counter commenters against me here are posing strawmen instead of actually responding to what I'm saying. Maybe there is someone in a discord server inaccurately telling others what I'm saying and those people are then commenting without actually listening to me? I don't know.
Changing trending aglorithms is one aspect here, but the other is the entire economic model of rewarding posts on Hive. If you remove POB from trending, then really you remove a key limb of POB itself - so what then is the point of having POB at all? It's pretty minimal from my POV. You will then have a situation where the only reason to try to get upvotes is to get rewards and most people won't even see the posts that are getting the most rewards.. So you will probably have an ever greater disconnect between rewards and the quality of the posts involved.
But you are saying exactly that. Even in this here comment.
So youre excluding all other reasons. And that IN FACT is restricting the community ability to affect content placement.
Youre saying that disagreement on rewards can be the only "allowed" reason to downvote. Or the only reason that should "count".
I think thats wrong. I think that if the community doesnt want to see a piece of content on the trending pages they should be able to reduce its visibility.
No, I am not saying any of these things. I have made very clear what I am saying numerous times.
No, I'm not. You aren't really explaining yourself or making sense here.
No, I'm not. Nothing I have said even sounds vaguely like I am saying that. Is it a full moon? lol
< Youre saying that disagreement on rewards can be the only "allowed" reason to downvote.
No, I'm not saying that.
To be super clear:
Free downvoting was introduced primarily to counter bid bots, which it did. I was 50/50 split on whether it was a good idea before it went live and when I saw the bid bots disappear I thought it was mostly a good idea to have free downvotes. We were then left with the somewhat rare problem of people going on downvote rampages for ideological or other reasons - which sows discord in the community and sets a negative PR tone.
As long as there is spam and plagiarism and other problems, we need a way to protect the reward pool, to optimise the attractiveness of Hive to users and to maximise sentiment and morale. Downvoting is currently the best tool for doing that that I know of. I have never said anything other than this.
So for now, downvoting is a good idea to me.
The problem is that it introduces a grey area of potential issues - such as was typified by Bernie Sanders and his malicious downvote crusades on Steem that had nothing to do with POB or respect for community spirit. As Dan stated in the community talk session that we both participated in (after you had left), the use of downvotes has a place, but an be abused to nuke accounts and destroy reputations in ways that have nothing to do with enhancing the spirit of POB - but are actually just driven by fragile egos or worse, an intent to stifle debate or limit information.. This is especially a problem when the information involved exposes serious potential corporate crimes that those involved may be financially invested in through stocks, employment or other routes.
When bad actors get large stake, we have problems. This needs to be addressed somehow and this is what I am addressing.
You keep on making completely contradictory statements.
If youre ok with the community affecting content placement, why are ideological downvotes wrong? You shouldnt be treating ideological downvotes any different than reward disagreement downvotes.
So obviously you do not support community affecting content placement for any reason they might have.
If its ok for the community to place content high on the trending pages for WHAT EVER REASON then it should be ok for the community to vote if off there FOR WHATEVER REASON.
And those that do so should NOT be called tyrants.
Now, you can disagree with their downvote and vote otherwise, but their action is as legitimate as any other action.
If you support the community affecting content placement freely, then you should have no problem with what @acidyo and @curangel are doing. Yet, you do.
Could it be that you just dont like getting downvoted?
I am saying that in principle I do not have a problem with downvoting for a variety of reasons. There are many scammers and spammers here who will try to take reward payouts and this is a problem for the value of Hive and also the attractiveness of Hive as a source of quality content. The rules surrounding what is plagiarism and what is spam could potentially even be hard coded into the blockchain to remove the human element involved in downvoting or removing them.
When it comes to downvoting content based only on differences of opinion - whether that be about the level of rewards involved or just thinking differently - people need to carefully weigh up the pros and cons of doing so. Small downvotes to express sentiment can add up and then the community can truly speak as a consensus if they want to remove larger amounts of rewards from posts. This is what Dan from 3speak was highlighting and advocating for - more downvotes, but on a smaller scale, with no nuking from one account deliberately destroying other accounts.
Such downvoting, when the account holder has not broken any community rules, is reasonable to me. What is not reasonable is people with larger amounts of stake deciding on their own that entire accounts are to be nuked, regardless of what they say or do. Sure, the blockchain currently allows that to be done, but even since the earliest days of Steem it has generally been understood and agreed that this is not a good idea, either from the perspective of community spirit or from a public PR perspective. The main public sentiment about steem and hive has always been that it is a pyramid scheme run by scammers. That might have changed a bit now, but that was always what I saw on social channels from influencers and others. This is because POB favours circle jerks and all the other issues we know so well. If individual stakeholders go around nuking those who are doing well on the platform, it just reinforces the image that POB is a sham and that there is only proof of wallet. This leads to a situation where investors who might have been interested in POB, instead just see a platform that rewards and promotes the content that is preferred by the wealthiest people - which is EXACTLY the problem with FB and MSM etc. - so the key selling points of this Web 3.0 platform fall apart rapidly. No real decentralisation, no real POB, no real change from Web 2.0. This was all explained in the show that you were on and generally agreed upon by all parties present.
If you want me to say it another way - I am saying that I am offering the suggestion that this behaviour is not inspiring to anyone, gives people a sense of being able to be dominated at any moment - despite what literally hundreds of other community members want.. And to top it off it is being done with a sense of aggressive tone, no feedback, ridicule and even threats of physical abuse in the case of one of them. No rational person considers this 'social' or a good PR look for Hive. I know for 100% sure that the majority of people I have personally tried to introduce to Hive have seen this kind of thing and just walked away.
A SOCIAL Network requires SOCIAL skills - not Gulag skills and a big wallet. It's time to evolve.
I am not sure how to take this post.
I think downvotes are an expression and a form of free speech, too.
voting is not really speech. speech is a form of communication that doesn't inherently alter economics. i wouldn't personally say that the right to free speech means that i also have the right to buy a nuclear bomb.
the votes are a form of expression, yes, but then we don't really have a full right of free expression in modern societies - since this would also include people 'expressing' themselves by decapitating random people.
Writing is not really speech either, since it's written (?)
Splitting hairs here. Freedom of expression is what I would like to see.
Censoring art or music impedes people's freedom of expression as much as censoring speech.
Of course, freedom of expression does not include violence... but I am not here for that type of philosophical debate.
...
On Hive, everyone shares a reward pool. Hive(power) is a governance token.
Since you can allocate posting rewards with upvotes, I think downvotes are necessary, too.
Everything you post on chain is imutable on a deeper level and that in itself makes it a great tool for free speech (expression).
I don't agree with curangel (pharesim) downvoting you this much, but your speech is still visible at the end of the day.
Also it is not impossible to power up enough to counter these downvotes... but that's another pointless debate.
I would like to see myself as a free speech advocate.
I agree with some of your points, but I also see it as everybody's right to down- or upvote a post as they please.
The main problem here is the unbalanced distribution of stakes ...and it has been since day 1.
...still not sure how to take your contribution above.
I see some really stupid behavior on both sides.
Acting like whatever you say should not have an economical impact of sorts has little to do with the right to express yourself freely.
Free speech generally includes written forms of communication, since they are equivalent to vocal sounds in terms of their intent and capacity to cause change.
Only really because we generally agree that we don't want violence. In a pure sense, violence is expression of what is inside of us.
It's only visible to the extent that the Hive websites ensure that it is - some do this more than others.
It's not completely impossible, but only possible for individual people in the top 1% of the world's wealth distribution. In powering up, they also create a situation where the current stakeholders can take some of that invested money for themselves. However, the reward pool is stakeholder's money to begin with - so arguably that isn't so much of an issue overall. It is still the case, though, that by creating a tension through downvoting that promotes buying stake to resolve it - the downvoters could think that they create a buy pressure.. However, at the same time they may also create a sell pressure as people get annoyed and just leave.. In that sense, downvoting is arguably more of a creator of sell pressure than upvoting is, since upvoting entices people to buy in and compete with their content (plus is obviously part of the fundamentals of the system, which is more obvious to many people than the effect of downvoting is).
That's a key issue - but since Hive can be bought using Fiat money and the Fiat money has been created totally fraudulently in massive quantities for a long time, there is very little chance that Hive will be distributed in concordance with genuine consensus via POB.
For me, this issue circles around POB since it entices investors and creators to envision a meritocratic, consensus based system where good content gets more eyeballs and therefore advertising. It's a great idea, but it falls apart to some extent when 'the wisdom of the crowd' becomes 'the opinion of a whale'.
Not much left to say here...
That, I fully agree with.
I think we need more small accounts powering up.
I am running for witness, too.
I have been around since almost the beginning.
I have a long history on chain, including saying some stupid stuff and downvoting posts...
I have always tried to help increase wider distribution of stakes.
I have been curating by hand with only my own account for 5+ years now.
For the most part, I try to stay out of political debates (on Hive), but sometimes, I can't help it. I have opinions on all sorts of topics, but avoided downvoting posts for political reasons.
Not sure, if I actively support free speech and what you mean by that, but a witness vote would help me a lot.
It has been a bit worryingly difficult to get witnesses to do anything at all to try to receive a large witness vote from me here. In fact, I don't think anyone has provided any evidence at all yet!
I am looking more for actions than words, though publicly spoken words in important conversations/ways/places is relevant. Examples might include organising counter upvotes on dubious downvotes, developing apps that change how Hive works in order to protect free speech, being a free speech activist outside of Hive in some way - these sorts of things.
Promoting decentralisation in practical ways is also relevant, but since anyone can just say 'I support free speech', we need something more than words.
I understand.
I am probably not the right candidate for what you want to see, then.
I think I followed logic zombies witness trail a few weeks ago now, I am happy to take your judgment on the witnesses on your list prioritising anti bullying and free speech, I'll follow the trail thankyou for doing all the research.
You are welcome. I will put time in soon to adding some more to the list too. :)
Dear @ura-soul, I agree with you! I admire your efforts and struggles for freedom of speech.
HIVE!D
Feeding the UNHOUSED - FRANK BACON reaction POST | CHain JITTER - ForceD Freedom NEWS FEEDS
OK, yes, I was planning to look into @good-karma for that reason - thanks for the reminder.